There is no reason to be interested in 43rd Street between Northern Blvd. and the BQE in Queens, New York but we’re interested in it and we’re interested in a miracle. Our exhibit will take place on April 26th and it will consist of a map and a little bus tour. The bus will take people to the BQE-end of 43rd Street and the map will help people get back to Flux Factory, which is located at the Northern Blvd.-end of the street. It’s not hard to get back since the street is straight and it leads directly; it’s like the Yellow Brick Road without the colors or the bricks and straighter. Dorothy had such an amazing experience along the course of following this yellow and brick road many things were neither what they seemed to be nor was anything simple. So you can see that the rub is in the map.
Most maps are about space and directions and they try to smooth things out for peripatetics. Our map will be different, though not quite opposite. Our map will be about walking down 43rd Street as we’ve transformed it and re-thought it and altered it and dreamed about it and forgotten about it and done stupid things along it and it will all end up in a big Spectacular, a song and dance number that will blow the proverbial socks from the feet.

Imagine that Flux Factory has built extra and superfluous but important things along the street. Imagine that we have augmented the images along the street with new images and other images and images from competing 43rd Streets in other boroughs. Imagine a tunnel dug in a soft place; a new chamber that the street can offer. Imagine going into the tunnel and taking a Polaroid of yourself and then leaving it there with the Polaroids of others, creating a community of tunnel people. Imagine walking into a bar or a restaurant along the street and saying a secret codeword to the proprietor and receiving a folder that gives you a task, that presents you with something to accomplish. Imagine finding little sounds and sights on the shelves at El Shater, a Middle Eastern market, or one of the local delis. You would be changing the dynamics of the street this way, altering the way it coheres. Imagine how the street would come alive as you made your way back to Flux because you wouldn’t ever be sure what parts of it are just the street and what parts are something more, or something different.

You would want all streets to be more like our street. You would start to understand public art in our way and then maybe you could explain it to us, though we’d probably be doing something different by then. Imagine that under a dirty and horrible and terrifying bridge you found a spot that was simple and beautiful and you could sit there for hours. Imagine that when you returned to Flux Factory, at the Northern Blvd.-end of 43rd Street, you saw the screening of an amazing production, a celebration of the 43rd Street that you had just explored. It would move you. The map would have unlocked a small miracle, a miracle on 43rd Street.